


You, Me, and I

by platonicharmonics



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon, SOMA Pacifist Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 21:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6441460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonicharmonics/pseuds/platonicharmonics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped alone and afraid at the bottom of the ocean, Simon sets out on a mission to bring Catherine back to him by whatever means necessary. Along the way, he realizes that there is still one living being left alive in Pathos-II who could be a source of comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You, Me, and I

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down and wrote the entire first draft of this in one sitting because I don't want my robot children to be sad. After a few revisions, here it is: the happiest ending I can imagine for this existential nightmare of a game.

_"To live is to suffer;_  
_to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."_  
**—Friedrich Nietzsche**

* * *

“Catherine? …Please don’t leave me alone. Catherine – Catherine?!”

It was so dark. And so heavy. The weight of everything was squeezing down on him, constricting his chest. His ~~Raleigh’s~~ lungs heaved as glitched wheezing sounds ground out of his speaker. His vision distorted into violent static snow in irregular pulses. He was hyperventilating. He was panicking. He was losing himself.

He was so, so fucking terrified.

There was a brief wave of something cold and calm that washed through him and he thought, Good. Suffer the same fate as Catherine. You deserve it. You moron. You monster.

And just like that, it was like the bottom of his existence dropped out. His vision cleared. His heartbeat stopped thundering. His breaths slowed and deepened. Where there was once an all-powerful surge of fear and regret and despair, now there was – numbness.

ERROR – Please retry.  
ERROR – Please retry.  
ERROR – Please retry.  
ERROR – Please retry.

_Oh, Catherine. What have I done?_

Slowly, Simon took Catherine out from her dock and cradled her in his hands. The error messages finally stopped, but on the omnitool’s screen it read: _Critical Power Surge >Hardware Damaged_.

“Maybe… maybe I can fix you,” he said aloud, as if it would comfort her. “At Phi. At Tau. All the way back at Upsilon, even.” He stood up and hooked the omnitool back onto his suit. “You’re not dying on me, Catherine. I won’t let you.”

He had a goal. It was going to be okay. As long as he had a goal, he could do anything. Catherine showed him that.

\--

His first obstacle was getting back into Phi from the Omega station with a busted omnitool. “Dammit,” he cursed at the console. “There’s gotta be some kind of emergency protocol for this thing.” Even if the whole station was dark and probably running on hopes and dreams after giving everything it had to power the gun.

It took upwards of an hour combing every square inch of the airlock, and then everything he could find in the Omega station, before he finally made progress. Using a piece of broken rebar as leverage, he managed to pry the grate off of the floor in the airlock to get to the drainage system below. Following its electronics back to the console, he managed to find the trigger point. All it needed was a positive signal. Why the hell was everything so dependent on omnitools anyway? What if someone’s broke while out in the field? How were they supposed to get back in? It was while he was stewing over this that he saw it – AIRLOCK RESET. He pulled out the cylinder, turned it, and pushed it back in, locking it in place just like the ones at Theta. The airlock rumbled, then the outside door swung shut and locked. The screeching sound of the drainage pipes announced that they were kicking on; Simon climbed back up onto the proper floor and sloppily replaced the grate. The water drained past his helmet, his chest, his knees, until it was finally all gone and the airlock was pressurized with the inside. The inner door unlocked itself and slowly swung open.

Phi was illuminated only by red emergency lights. All the computer terminals read CRITICAL POWER FAILURE: LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS OFFLINE.

No problem for a walking, talking power suit. All he had to do was find the parts to fix Catherine and everything would be okay again.

He combed through every room of Phi and opened every box in every locker and storage closet. Coming up with nothing useful, he finally made his way to the bullet dock. Catherine’s body was still slumped on the floor, illuminated only by the dim red emergency lights. Her face was shrouded in shadow.

Kneeling down, Simon tenderly turned her body onto its back and stared at her bludgeoned face. Everything in the world went quiet, and reality shrunk down to the two of them. He reached out and rested one hand on her collarbone, extending his consciousness to her blackbox again. Just to hear her voice. He needed to hear her voice.

He listened to her argue passionately about the ARK. Listened to the ensuing struggle, and then listened to the clanging metal and the crunching bone of her murder. He pulled out of the blackbox and stared at her face again. Sighing, he leaned forward and closed her eyes, then brushed her hair out of her blood-encrusted face.

“You deserved so much better,” he whispered.

He made to stand up again, but something caught his eye. On the floor, where Catherine’s body used to be lying, was an omnitool. He picked it up and turned it on; the screen lit up and Helper Jane greeted him in her cold British accent. Besides being half caked in Catherine’s dried blood, it looked to be in perfect condition. Good. Now he just needed to take it apart.

Except all the tools at Phi looked to be meant for large machinery, not small and delicate handheld gadgets. Nothing here would work.

He could go to Tau, and continue that ridiculous game of cat and mouse with the shambling power suit. Except there was nothing obviously helpful about omnitools at Tau, either, and at least one of Tau’s airlocks was broken. Still. It wasn’t like he had much choice.

He secured Catherine and Catherine’s omnitool and left Phi through the main airlock.

\--

Simon’s strategy of darting from light to light, following the trail of red back towards Tau, seemed to be working. The leviathan had returned, occasionally swimming by and emitting those ominous bellows. Simon just curled up in the sand beside a light every time it swam by, then lunged upright and sprinted to the next one to do the same thing. Rinse and repeat. It was giving him a real workout. Then the trail lights flickered once, twice, and died.

The leviathan bellowed and swam straight towards him, its open mouth bathing him in sick red light.

Simon sprinted through the abyss, blindly stumbling over crags and ridges – some of which saved his life, causing the leviathan to miss him and have to swim around again, buying him time. He ran and swerved and weaved until he saw the opening of a wide tunnel. _The_ tunnel. The Alpha tunnel.

 _Fuck it_ , he thought, and ran in. The leviathan followed.

He knew for a fact that there were tunnels in Alpha too narrow for the leviathan to follow. His terror was making him glitch and his joints seize up. If he could just – _make it_ \- _please_ -

The leviathan’s teeth curled around him and crunched down on his suit, opening and closing its mouth to do it again and again. He screamed. The leviathan continued to gnaw on him like a giant bone, and when they entered the WAU’s chamber, it began thrashing its head around, making his body fold and bend like a ragdoll. Finally, he fell out of its mouth and floated down to the floor. Simon watched through three colorblind dimensions as the leviathan crashed into a pile of structure gel, making it collapse, then knocked its head against the WAU’s heart as it struggled to maneuver and slow down.

The WAU _shrieked,_ and the world exploded.

\--

When Simon drifted awake, his vision was shot to hell. Images came at him in four different versions, leaving movement trails whenever he turned his head. He whimpered in pain and hid his head in his arms. Eventually, he peeked out again, and saw the overwhelming blue glow of a WAU port. Simon struggled to stand, falling once, twice, before he eventually limped and staggered over to it. He shoved his fist against it and gasped as the port sucked it in, constricting around it with its usual pins-and-needles sensation, then gasped for a different reason when his system was flooded with… safety. His vision brightened to a soft pastel violet and the world was clear again, his vision fine, his body fine, the pain gone. The port squeezed his hand out and closed itself, going dark.

Simon immediately checked on Catherine. She was broken, but no more than she was before. The functional omnitool was fine. Knowing they were safe, Simon chanced looking around.

The leviathan was gone. What’s more, scaly tentacles of hardened structure gel were coiling around the metal of the tunnel and constricting like snakes, slowly but surely warping the metal down to a size where the leviathan couldn’t fit. The hole in the floor by the heart was being filled in with regular structure gel, which was forming itself into a thick mound of fleshy goop.

A chill shivered through his body, and Simon was suddenly reminded of why he couldn’t do what Ross wanted. He remembered that _his_ scan, he himself, was the template used for creating AIs. The WAU was built off of his bones. There was some part of him, however small it was, in its mind – a part of its mind. He also remembered that the WAU did everything it did to fulfill its main protocol: save and preserve humanity. Nobody thought to program in the meaning of life into its brain. Nobody thought to teach it morals, or philosophy, or install some kind of value system. The WAU fumbled its way through Pathos-II with what it had, shoving stolen brain scans into random robots, and when that didn’t work it tried infusing their bodies with structure gel, and when that didn’t work it added electronic elements and made things like the Curie monster and the robot girl, and then Ross. 

_Johan Ross_ , who wanted to kill the thing, and the WAU knew it, but it still went through incredible and ridiculous measures to try and revive him. Had it grieved? Was it attached? Whatever its motives, it succeeded. Ross, no matter how terrifying and demonic his body looked, was able to keep and have control of his mind. After Ross, it must have started fucking around with the diving suits, making the shambling thing in Tau, and then it made _him_ in Upsilon. Whole. Complete. Sane.

Most of the WAU’s botched projects tried to kill him, sure. And the WAU overcharged everyone’s blackboxes at Omicron, making them explode. But… he didn’t know if it was on purpose or not. None of it made any sense; the WAU was also the only thing capable of, and willing to, heal him. Amy said, ‘ _It won’t let me die… Nothing’s allowed to die…_ ’ It didn’t make sense for the WAU to want to kill. It seemed to want literally anything and everything but. Ross said that when the WAU discovered what Raleigh wanted to do, it shrieked. Shrieking isn’t something logical and calculated that an AI does. Shrieking isn’t purposefully overloading blackboxes with full knowledge and understanding of what it meant. Was the WAU… afraid? Ross said in his journals that the WAU had developed awareness. So if the WAU was aware of itself as a being, and if it could feel fear, and maybe even grief…

…Was it alive?

It was these thoughts that stayed Simon’s hand when he was confronted by Ross in this very chamber. The WAU was a living being. Both Catherine and Ross himself said that it was trying its best to follow orders and save people. It just didn’t know what was right and what was wrong. It lacked definitions. It was like a big, all-powerful child, sticking its dinosaur heads on its Barbie dolls. Simon wasn’t sure whether or not it could change, or… or develop further. It had been improving. Sure, there was a sea of royal fuck ups along the way, but it was made from his cognitive skeleton, right? No fucking wonder.

So Ross hurt him and tried to force him to kill it and then got eaten by the leviathan, leaving Simon no choice but to run like a bat out of hell, and now he’s here.

“Hey…” he tried. The heart continued to slowly throb. “Can you… can you understand me?”

No response.

“Thanks for not killing me while I was passed out on the floor, I guess.”

No response.

“Y-You know I saved you, right? Back with Ross. My body can kill you, and he wanted me to kill you, but I chose not to. Do you understand?”

No response.

“We… We’re on the same side, here. We both woke up here in a shitty situation, and we’re both trying our best with what we got. So, uh… Maybe we can help each other. Okay? Can you… can you help me?”

A large tentacle of structure gel unfurled from the ceiling and hung down like a snake. It twisted to face him, and then slightly opened its… mouth. It was kind of like a WAU port.

If Simon could’ve wrinkled his noise, he would’ve wrinkled his nose. “Do you want me to… touch it?”

The tentacle mouth flexed slightly. Spit-like gel drool oozed out of it.

Shuddering and cringing, Simon warily pressed his left hand against the opening. The tentacle sucked it in and swallowed him all the way up to his shoulder, then started convulsing. His arm felt… hot… and slick. Simon shuddered again and looked away, making a disgusted noise that sounded kind of like a quack.

Finally, the tentacle slid off – he made one last disgusted quack at the sensation – and he looked at his arm. Structure gel was bound around his glove, gauntlet, and upper arm in a kind of webbing, with small blue bulbs glowing the WAU’s signature blue.

“What… a-am I supposed to do with this?”

A brief burst of electromagnetic energy made Simon’s vision glitch. He quickly backed away. “Jeez, okay, okay, I’m leaving-”

The WAU gave a low rumble and convulsed. Gel structures started opening and closing, like flower blossoms.

“What?” Simon demanded, reaching out with his left arm, palm up. “What do-”

His systems blacked out for a moment, and then he watched as the WAU chamber flashed and thundered with an electromagnetic pulse. “ _Whoa fuck!_ ” He jumped back and trembled. The WAU seemed unfazed. Once his breathing calmed down, he looked incredulously at his arm and asked, “Was that _me_?”

No response.

“I- what- okay. Thanks. I think.”

No response.

Simon speed-walked his way out of the chamber and back through the narrow hallways.

\--

His new EMP arm was a heaven-send. It was a weapon – an actual _weapon_ – he could use against the WAU abominations. He managed to elude the leviathan and schools of killer fish by travelling through the freight tunnel back to Tau, then broke the glass and jumped out once he reached the broken airlock. Crawling around the outskirts to hide from the beasts, he entered through the main airlock and started combing Tau for anything useful. The shambling suit was on him within minutes. After a long series of chase scenes which, in hindsight, would be pretty funny if set to Benny Hill music, Simon was cornered and threw his left hand out to shield himself. The shambling suit froze, then seized and backed away, sparking.

That was the only useful thing he got out of Tau.

Back in the airlock, Simon thought about Omicron and its robot repair bay. _Surely_ there must be tools and supplies there. Besides, Omicron only had one living thing in it, and she didn’t bother him if he didn’t bother her. Then he remembered that, no, there were two living things in Omicron.

Oh.

…Oh.

Simon… the first – second? – Simon… was still in there. Alive. Trapped. And alone.

This gave Simon – Simon v2.0? – a lot to think about on the jog back to the climber. Catherine said that he’d sleep for a few days and then wake up. If he could traverse the entirety of Pathos-II in one day, surely he could beat the original Simon to waking up? He wouldn’t have to wake up and feel abandoned. He wouldn’t have to live that nightmare.

And if _he_ … v2.0… could reunite with Simon… he wouldn’t have to live that nightmare either. He’d be able to talk with him, and – _god_ – touch him, even. Something he couldn’t do with Catherine.

Simon took a moment to pause and catch his breath beside a light post. What would it be like? Two versions of himself living side by side? Would it be like a split personality? Or would it be as if he was inhabiting two bodies at once? Nah, it wouldn’t be that. He could tell he was a different man from the one sleeping in Omicron. He was _definitely_ a different man from the one that died in Toronto. The abyss and the ARK changed him. For better or for worse, he didn’t know.

Simon continued his jog. Would the original Simon even like him? He remembered snapping at Catherine as he stared into his own face. He called her disgusting. She was hurt. He hurt her. 

And he did the exact same damn thing _again_.

He didn’t deserve Catherine. Maybe… maybe he could give her back to the original Simon and kill himself. Catherine would probably be happy about that. After all, she seemed to assign the same worth to all his copies, and the original Simon would hate him, he knew it. He – v2.0 – wasn’t worth the battery power. He didn’t deserve to live, after what he’d done. What separated him from the man who bashed her skull in with a wrench? Worthless dumb bastards.

If he could just do this one thing right…

He made it to the climber and docked Catherine’s omnitool. After adjusting the settings to ascend and pulling the lever, he sat down and locked himself in with the safety. That was when Helper Jane helpfully announced, “Climber return not scheduled; please contact Omicron for clearance.”

He would not yell.

He would _not_ yell.

“ _FUCK!_ ” he yelled. He shoved the safety off of him and started pacing furiously around the cage. He was so angry. He was so close. So damn close, and the stupid climber needed to be scheduled? Who the hell thought that up? They were at the bottom of the goddamn ocean! People should be able to go where-the-hell-ever they needed to go!

Simon punched one of the bars of the cage, making it bow outwards with a loud bang, and screamed in frustration. The water around him lit up, and then a small clap of thunder swallowed him. Did he let out another EMP? Who cared. Who the fuck cared. Nothing mattered.

He couldn’t save Catherine, and he couldn’t save Simon.

His vision was glitching and his hands were curled into fists. His breathing was heavy and labored. The water around him still crackled slightly. Gradually, he calmed down. His heartbeat returned to normal. His breathing deepened. Simon covered his helmet with his hands and breathed. In, out. In, out. He probably didn’t even need to breathe; he just did. It was comforting.

Slowly dragging his hands down his faceplate, Simon breathed out with a shudder. It was all right. It was okay. There had to be another way. There had to.

Simon climbed the ladder to the roof of the elevator and inspected the circuit board, hoping there was some kind of reset like Phi’s airlock. There was. He immediately primed the switches and flipped the lever for the elevator to be reset and waited. Nothing happened; the elevator was dark.

Oh, no.

Oh, nonono.

Simon frantically switched every lever, trying everything he could to restore power. It was hopeless; the circuit board was fried.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid-

 _It’s okay, Simon_ , he heard Catherine’s voice say, as if in a memory. _Don’t get upset. You’ll figure it out._

Simon sat on his knees and stared at his hands. Slowly, his head tilted upwards until he was staring at the seemingly endless cable up above, its trail of red lights fading into the darkness above.

Well. If he was going to beat Simon to waking up, he’d better start climbing.

\--

The climb back up to Omicron was agony. 3,994 meters of cable-climbing in a heavy corpse-filled power suit with only minimal mechanical enhancements took a toll. Sure, he was able to use the suit’s tether to latch him onto the cable to catch him when he slipped and fell, like a mountain climber’s rope, even if the tether was supposed to be used to secure the diver in place when working in a tidal storm. His floodlights came in handy, too, helping to illuminate every curious gel-infested creature that saw him and thought ‘chum.’ One time, as he was hanging limply from the tether, waiting for his energy levels to recharge so he could continue climbing, a giant squid with structure gel bubbling through its skin and mutated plates protruding through its head swam by to investigate. It was the size of two train cars. When it looked like it was going to reach out and grab him – and then worse, bite down on the cable with its razor beak – he summoned what little energy he had left in him and used his EMP. The squid recoiled and swam away, seizing and hissing.

Simon climbed the climber cable for what seemed like a small eternity. Hours passed. Days passed? It felt like weeks passed. Any longer at this, Simon mused, and he might fuse with the cable.

 _Finally_ , hope. A trail of red lights branched off of the cable to illuminate a walkway. Light reached his optics from the surface. An hour or so later, Simon grabbed hold of the Omicron walkway and clumsily hoisted himself up onto the metal grates. His battery felt drained. His body felt numb and heavy. Carefully, he used the railing to hoist himself up, then used it as support to shuffle towards the airlock.

As the airlock equalized pressure and drained water, Simon feared for the Simon inside. Time no longer had any meaning to him, but had it been more than two days? He’d been so horrifically delayed, and he felt half-dead. Regardless, there was only one way to find out.

The inside door opened and Simon staggered forward with a low groan. Limping into the room and trying to calm down his heaving breaths, he looked around the room to make sure the robot girl hadn’t managed to get in. Seeing the door still locked and no signs of carnage, he turned to look at the pilot chair.

Simon was gone.

“Oh…” he moaned. “No… Simon…”

He began to methodically shuffle around the room, checking the most likely hiding spots. There weren’t many. He turned the corner by the locked door and saw a hunched form curled up in the shadows of the corner, hiding by the lockers, twitching. Simon shambled over.

He stopped right behind him. Softly, through a speaker, he could hear suppressed whimpers and sobs. “Simon… hey…” he prompted, gingerly. He reached out and touched his shoulder, turning him around. Simon – the not-quite-original Simon; Simon v1.1? – cried out and backhanded him, pushing past him to sprint – he was seizing, he must be terrified – back around the corner. Simon v2.0 followed, and saw him trying to hide in one of the suit lockers, but his hands were shaking too much to close the door. Simon limped over and caught him, pushing open the door and grabbing him by the shoulders. Simon v1.1 screamed and threw his arms up to shield his head. He was glitching so bad… He was so… So…

“ _Please stop_ ,” Simon v1.1 cried. Begged. “ _Please stop, please stop it, stop it, stop_ -“

Simon v2.0 let go and backed away, both of them falling to the floor. Simon v2.0 carefully crawled back further, holding up his right hand in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you, it’s okay, please…”

Simon v1.1 folded up his knees and hugged them, hiding his head in his arms. Simon v2.0 let him cry. He felt like crying himself. Seeing himself so distraught, so _broken_ , disturbed him. Scared him.

“I’m sorry…” he said softly. “I’m sorry. It’s okay. Everything’s okay now.”

Time passed.

Eventually, Simon v1.1 calmed down enough to look up at him. He didn’t uncurl, but he was breathing easier and he didn’t seem nearly as scared. The glitching seemed to stop, too. “Who- Who are y-you?”

“I’m a copy of you.”

He could hear his respirator. In. Out. In. Out. “How… how is that possible? I thought Catherine…”

“The pilot seat didn’t transfer you over into this suit.” Simon v2.0 gestured down to himself. “It made a copy of you and installed it here. There’s two of us, now.”

“No there’s _not_ ,” Simon v1.1 snapped. The red lights of his eyes stared him down. “Did Catherine know?”

“She knew.”

“She _knew_? And she… She…?”

“At first I wanted to kill you in your sleep. Catherine was against it. She didn’t want you dead. She cared.”

Simon v1.1 slowly uncurled, like a snake. “You know, at first I thought, because I blacked out, Catherine took the suit for herself and went on alone. Like the ARK was all she cared about. Now-“ he huffed “-I don’t know which is worse: her taking the suit and leaving me behind, or her choosing some fake knock-off and abandoning me like some- some used toy.” His head snapped up, suddenly, and his red eyes were very wide. “But you’re back. The ARK, did-”

“Yes.”

“-you come back to bring me with you? To get me on the ARK too?”

Simon v2.0 tensed. “No.”

Inhale. Exhale. “You couldn’t launch it.”

“No, we launched it. It’s in space now. _They’re_ in space, now. Among the stars.”

Simon v1.1’s voice was very small. “I don’t understand.”

“We made it all the way to the Omega Space Gun, Simon, with the ARK. I loaded it up, and me and Catherine interfaced with a pilot seat. We uploaded ourselves into the ARK during the launch countdown. It launched with us on it, but they weren’t us. They were copies of us. Me and Catherine were left behind.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s a Catherine and a Simon safe on the ARK, Simon. But just like you were left behind, I was left behind, too. And so was Catherine. So we came back.”

Simon v1.1’s head twitched side to side. “No. No, that’s not _fair_. You’re lying. You’re _lying_!”

That wasn’t what he expected. “No, I’m not!”

“You just don’t want me on the ARK! You don’t want me at all! You came back to finish the job!”

“No! That’s not it!”

“Where’s Catherine?! I want her to look me in the fucking eye when she tells me she wants me to die-”

“I’m telling the _truth_ -!”

“ _Where is Catherine?!_ ” Simon v1.1 snapped. Simon v2.0 stared at him. “Plug her in! Let me talk to her!”

“I… I’m sorry, Simon.” Gingerly, Simon v2.0 unhooked Catherine from his suit and held her out. He watched as all of the anger drained out of Simon v1.1’s body as he looked at the fried tool, to be replaced first by shock, then fear, then anger again, then grief.

“Cath…?” he whispered. He slowly reached out a hand. “What happened to her?”

“You remember Brandon? The guy we ran the simulation on in Theta to get the cipher? Remember how he self-destructed when he got too stressed?”

“Yeah.”

“ _That_.”

“How did she- h- h- how-?”

Simon v2.0 looked down at the floor. Simon v1.1 began crawling closer. “I came here to fix her. If we can just replace her damaged parts, she’ll come back.”

Simon v1.1 curled a gentle hand around Catherine, so they were both holding her. “You think we can? Like, in the robot repair bay?”

“Exactly.”

“And ‘we’? As in, together?”

“Safety in numbers, right?”

There was a profound moment where Simon v1.1 looked – _really_ looked at him. Gingerly, he tugged Catherine out of Simon v2.0’s hand and tucked her against his chest.

“Then let’s plug in that spare omnitool of yours and let’s go.”

\--

Simon v1.1 refused to have his back turned on Simon v2.0, always insisting that he walk ahead. Simon v2.0 was fine with it, although the prickle of unblinking eyes constantly boring into the back of his skul- _helmet_ , got a little unnerving after a while. The robot girl seemed to have returned to her favorite crying room, which was good. It meant they weren’t likely to be bothered as they worked. They still closed the door behind them in the robot repair bay, anyway.

Together, they set out to find all the replacement parts and necessary tools for Catherine’s omnitool host. The bay had all the screws and screwdrivers they needed, along with a spare motherboard and tool chip. A storage closet had a spare hard-drive, circuit wires, and a replacement screen. For the better part of the day, they carefully took her apart and then tried to put her back together again, all while trying to decipher an omnitool user’s manual written in Mandarin.

Simon v2.0 would occasionally try to start conversation. Simon v1.1 remained frigidly silent. At one point, the hostile aura radiating off of Simon v1.1 was so strong Simon v2.0 swore it started making his vision glitch.

Simon v2.0 let go of Catherine, where he was bracing her as Simon v1.1 was screwing in the motherboard. Simon v1.1 immediately looked up and tensed.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Simon v2.0 demanded.

“I don’t know what to make of you.” Simon v1.1 straightened up and shifted from foot to foot. “There’s that shit all over your arm.”

“It’s not all that different from the shit all over your whole body.”

“That’s different.”

Simon v2.0 tried to roll his eyes and found he could not. “How?”

“Because I sure as shit didn’t do that when I made… it, and it feels wrong.”

“I got it from the WAU.”

Simon v1.1 leaned back a half step and crossed his arms. “Did something get you down in the abyss?”

Simon v2.0 shifted away and hugged himself. “No, it was, uh… It was- kinda more of a free-will donation.”

Simon v1.1 flinched. “It wasn’t from those WAU ports, was it?”

“The WAU isn’t actively _trying_ to hurt us, you know. Not intentionally.”

“…What happened? What did you _do_?”

“Nothing. I just… asked the WAU for help, and it gave me this. It gives off electromagnetic pulses. I used it to fend off mutations on the way up here. I wouldn’t have made it without it.”

“And Ross was just fine with all that? Mr. Stop-the-WAU-at-All-Costs?”

“Ross is dead.” Simon v1.1 flinched again. This time, he glanced at Catherine and the tools on the table. “It _wasn’t me_ , so stop thinking it, and it wasn’t the WAU either! A giant mutation busted through the floor and ate him. Besides, Ross was willing to kill me and abandon the ARK to kill the WAU. He was unhinged.”

“No shit he was unhinged, everybody’s in a giant torture grinder because of that thing!”

“We’re _alive_ because of that thing! And we’ve been _kept_ alive by it, too! It’s the only thing holding Pathos-II together!”

“What kind of black goop Kool-Aid have you been drinking?”

“It’s just a stupid AI, Simon, not an evil mastermind. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. Nobody ever taught it what the meaning of life was, or what it meant to be human, or what kind of life was more valuable than another. It thinks what it’s doing is a good thing. A life full of pain is just _life_ to it, and its protocol says that’s the only result it should care about.”

“That’s why you should’ve _killed it_.”

“It’s been slowly getting _better_! You were its last creation, Simon, and if any of us should be suspicious of the other it should be _me_ to _you_. The only thing WAU about me is some structure gel bound on the outside of my arm, but _you’re_ WAU to the core.”

“Don’t you turn this shit on me-!”

Simon v2.0’s voice took on a half-hysterical note as he threw his arms open. “My point is that you’re _fine_ , Simon! You’re not a monster! You’re _you_! We’re _us_! Simon!”

“You are _not_ me, okay?! There is no _us_.”

There was a moment of silence that stifled the room, broken only by the heavy breathing of the two robots who didn’t need to breathe.

Simon v2.0 shook his head and looked down. “So that’s what all this is about, huh?”

Simon v1.1 tucked himself into a corner again. “You’re not. Me. You didn’t wake up in Upsilon lost and confused, didn’t face all the shit I faced, didn’t go through the fucking Theta meat-grinder. That was _me_. _You_ started here in Omicron.”

“But I share all your memories! I remember doing all those things, and I remember Toronto! I remember our past! I remember that we used to be Anastasia Marie Jarrett, and that we were a miserable, depressing brat! I remember every word Mom said when we came out as transgender, I remember the day we got our first testosterone shot; I remember meeting Jesse, and I remember how the street lights hit Ashley’s face the night of the crash. I remember the fucking nightmares. I remember everything you remember and felt everything you felt; how am I _not_ you?”

“ _There can’t be more than one Simon!_ ”

“You’re right! Simon died a hundred years ago in Toronto, so _who the fuck are we?!_ ”

Simon v1.1’s optics widened at that. The tension in the room broke and drained, leaving them both winded and cold. Simon v1.1 looked down at the ground and hugged himself.

“We’re alone, is what we are,” Simon v2.0 continued, his voice crackling and distorting to express tears that would never come. “Alone and abandoned at the bottom of the ocean. The ARK’s fucked off into space. Catherine’s practically in a coma. There’s nothing else in this world… I-I just don’t want to be alone…” He curled into himself. “ _I don’t want to be alone._ ”

After a long pause, Simon v2.0 heard tentative footsteps making their way towards him. When he looked up, he was face-to-face with Simon v1.1 – as much as they could be, at least, since Raleigh was about two inches shorter than Imogen. There was no face to read any expression off of, but…

Simon v1.1 reached out a slow, gentle hand and cupped Simon v2.0’s faceplate. In a low, fragile voice, he said, “I don’t want to be alone either.”

Simon v2.0 practically folded into Simon v1.1’s embrace and returned it in kind. The two clung to each other, and as the warmth of the other began to seep into their bones, they began to shake and cling harder. Even Catherine, as much as each of them loved her, wasn’t capable of giving them the sensation of _touch_ , of physical comfort, of _presence_.

“Maybe… maybe we can take a break…”

“Sounds good.”

The two of them found a spot on the ground, sat down, and let themselves be _with_ each other. They’d return to working on Catherine soon enough, but in the meantime, they were giving themselves _this_.

\--

“She’s finished! She’s – oh my god, she’s finished! Simon, we did it!” Simon v2.0 cradled Catherine in his hands and basked in the soft glow of the screen, staring at Catherine’s cortex chip name in the bottom right hand corner.

“Well? Come on, what are we waiting for?! Let’s plug her in!”

The two of them left the robot repair bay and hurried – quietly – down the hallways back to the dive room, keeping their optics peeled for crying silhouettes. They made it, and after closing the door behind them, Simon v1.1 quickly removed the bloody omnitool and let Simon v2.0 dock Catherine. The processing icon came on the screens.

“- _ING DICK_!” Catherine screamed.

The omnitool flared, sparked, and died again.

CRITICAL POWER FAILURE  
ERROR – Please retry.  
ERROR – Please retry.  
ERROR – Please retry.

Simon v1.1’s voice was soft, quiet, and cold. “Simon… what was that.”

Simon v2.0 was bent over the omnitool, staring at it in horror. Every new piece was fried and ruined, and her cortex chip – the one thing they couldn’t replace – now had a crack in it. “Catherine…” he whimpered. “Catherine… Catherine, no, no, nonono, please-”

“Simon… What. Was. That.” Simon v1.1 took a step closer, shaking. “What did you do. What did you _do_ to her?”

“Catherine, please, no… Oh god… Oh my god…”

“What did you do to make her that upset? _Answer me!_ ” Simon v1.1 stepped up and shoved him away from the console, placing himself between him and Catherine.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Didn’t mean to what?! What could you have possibly accidentally done to make her _that_ upset?!”

“I… I-I…” Simon v2.0 backed himself up against the wall. His vision was glitching. Softly, he confessed. “I screamed at her. Cussed her out. Called her names. Two separate times.”

“You did _what_?”

“The first time was right after I was created. I woke up and heard you talking. The second time was right after the ARK launched. Without us on it.”

“That’s no excuse!”

“I know it isn’t.”

“How could you have _done this_?! How _could_ you?! She was the best thing in this _damn_ hellhole and you- _you fucking_ \- killed her-!”

“Stop…”

“You know what? No.” Simon v1.1 reached back and took Catherine from her dock, clutching her to his chest and taking a step back. “No. I’m not doing this. Like it or not we’re all we’ve got, and Catherine’s not out of options yet. Come on.” He strode purposefully towards the door. Simon v2.0 straightened. “Don’t talk to me.”

Silently, he followed.

\--

In the lab, Simon v1.1 pried off Catherine’s cortex chip and dumped the fried omnitool on a counter. He then put Catherine in the free drawer, secured it, and then operated the laser dispenser to pour more structure gel on her. The gel fed off of what gel was already there, growing and spreading even further, and – most importantly – sealing the crack. Without a word, Simon v1.1 took Catherine out of the drawer and marched straight back to the dive room with Simon v2.0 on his heels. He docked the functional omnitool back into its slot and then tried to install Catherine into the new omnitool just like he did before at Lambda.

He couldn’t get the chip to fit; it would never snap in correctly. The structure gel made it too big. “Help me,” he begged, his voice cracking. Simon v2.0 came over and tried, hands shaking and heart pounding. Again and again, the cortex chip popped out of place or refused to snap altogether. He eventually tried forcing it, but all that did was bend the receiver rungs on the omnitool. Now nothing would ever fit. He started violently glitching. She was dead.

Catherine was dead.

Simon v1.1 wrested Catherine out of his hands and backed away. “Get. Out.”

Simon v2.0 stared at him.

“I said. _Get out_ ,” Simon v1.1 snarled.

Slowly, and with seizing steps, Simon 2.0 walked out of the room, down the hallway, around the corner, and out of sight.

Simon v1.1 stared at Catherine’s cortex chip for what seemed like hours, gently caressing it with his thumb. He was alone again. The ARK was gone. Catherine was gone. Hope… was gone.

Now all he had was Catherine’s killer. Himself.

What did any of them have left to live for?

A distant, soprano scream and crackle of electricity broke him out of his reverie. “ _Simon_ ,” he gasped, and took off in a dead sprint. He got to the room just in time to see Simon v2.0 clamber up off of the floor and begin walking towards the robot girl again. She convulsed, choked, and screamed, “ _Get away!_ ” before charging at him.

He didn’t even think. He just ran and lunged, even as he glitched out, throwing himself in front of Simon v2.0. The robot girl brought her pincher crashing down over his helmet, and-

Simon v1.1 hit the ground with a heavy _clang_. Seeing the robot girl standing over his limp body, Simon v2.0 shouted and held out his left palm. She screamed and staggered backwards, clutching her head and sobbing. Keeping his hand raised, Simon v2.0 moved forward towards Simon v1.1’s body, making the robot girl move back and gag, “ _Please stop… please… Hurts…_ ” He grabbed Simon v1.1 by the arm and hoisted him up on his shoulders in a fireman-carry. He’d lowered his left hand enough for the robot girl to come charging at him again, but he threw it back up at the last second; she screamed again and he hurried backwards, closing the door behind him, then turning to _run_.

That was when he remembered he had a nasty limp and unreliable vision. He heard the sound of the door opening behind him, so occasionally he’d throw his left hand back behind him as he frantically hobbled back towards the dive room. It kept her off of them just enough, but once he passed through the dive room door, there was no way he’d reach the omnitool to lock the door without her getting in. Simon v1.1 was stirring on his shoulders anyway; he dumped him on the floor and turned around to hold her off from coming in, like the world’s most intense game of traffic cop. Every time she screamed in pain, he’d get hit with _her_ EMPs, and the two quickly dissolved into an EMP war. He could hear Simon v1.1 limping to the console to lock the door.

“Wait!” he yelled. “Don’t lock it! Turn off the safety sensors and then max out the hydraulics!”

“What?!”

“Just do it! I have an idea!” Simon v1.1 managed to do all that hacking in less than five minutes, which was impressive. “Okay! Now I’m about to do something really stupid, and I need you to jump over to the other side and close the door when I say so. Ready? Go!”

He lowered his left hand and the robot girl charged at him, wheezing and sobbing. By the time she got close enough to grab he was glitching so bad that he almost missed and died, but miraculously, he reached out and grabbed her by the neck with his left hand and used his whole body to throw her to the ground. “Go! Go!”

Simon v1.1 jumped over them both and positioned himself on the other side. As the robot girl seized and screamed underneath him, he pinned down her pincher and wrestled her body until her neck was in the doorframe. “Now!”

He let go and the doors slammed closed with a thunderous _bang_. The robot girl twitched once, twice, then went still as blood and structure gel oozed out and fell between the grates.

Reaching up, he opened the door again to reveal Simon v1.1 standing on the other side, and wow. He had no idea their optics could even open that wide. “What the _fu_ -”

“Now we need a chip frame and more structure gel, come on!” He struggled upright again and limped over the body, grabbing Simon v1.1 and dragging him down the hall. Then Simon v1.1 dug his heels in and tugged them to a stop. “What? What?!”

Simon v1.1 threw his arms around him and tucked his faceplate into the crook of his neck. “Don’t ever fucking do that again,” his speaker warbled.

The world slowed to a stop. He could breathe again. Slowly, Simon v2.0 wrapped his arms around the other and nestled into his neck as well. They gave each other a firm squeeze, then continued, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Simon v1.1 insisted they allow themselves to be healed by WAU ports before they did anything, and Simon v2.0 grudgingly assented. Then, they both returned to the lab, filled a tube with structure gel, and then grabbed another cortex chip frame from the robot repair bay. Returning to the headless body of the robot girl, Simon v1.1 warily prompted, “Are we doing what I think we’re doing?”

“Yes,” Simon v2.0 announced as he shoved the stake of the cortex frame into the girl’s neck.

“Okay.”

Simon v1.1 slipped Catherine’s cortex chip into the frame and snapped it into place. Then, he propped the body up as Simon v2.0 poured the structure gel over the base of the frame and the body, then brushed against it with his left hand, causing it to expand and unite the body with chip. Gradually, the red lights of the optics flickered on. The chest started moving. Her metal head started looking around.

“Catherine?” they both prompted at once.

“…Hello boys.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Epilogue:** And then they got her some damn pants.
> 
> (PS: Simon's dead name? I actually put a [lot](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=anastasia+name+meaning) of [thought](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=marie+name+meaning) into that. /wink)


End file.
